


Autumn Leaves

by non_sequential



Category: White Collar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_sequential/pseuds/non_sequential
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The worst thing wasn’t that Ford had conned her.</p><p>Coda to 2.13 Countermeasures</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn Leaves

The worst thing wasn’t that Ford had conned her. Of course he was on the con. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim. It wasn’t even that she’d lost him for good. That had happened years before. Without Byron they’d just fallen apart.

It was that she’d _let_ him con her. Part of her had been waiting for him to bring her in, like old times. Apparently they’d got the paper by armed robbery. Amateurs. If she’d been in on it, oh, they’d have _danced_.

Except that in the old days she wouldn’t have been waiting around to be asked. So instead she’d let him charm her like a mark. Like she was nothing but a naïve old lady with nothing but a house full of memories.

And Neal, bless his heart, Neal had put her up on the same Fairy Princess pedestal as he’d placed Kate. She snorted gently into her whiskey. That girl had been as much a damsel in distress as June was or June would eat Ford’s hat. But he didn’t get it. She’d told him. Confessed even, despite years of Byron’s strictures on how confession may be good for the soul, but was hell on the rap sheet. She’d told him how badly she wanted to dance again. And he’d led her into a very nice two-step.

She didn’t generally suffer from self-image problems. She’d loved and been loved by not one, but two handsome, clever men. She was beautiful. Always had been, still was, and carrying her age elegantly, just like her Mama always told her. She hadn’t had to worry about money in sixty years. She had three beautiful, intelligent, successful children, and four adorable grand-children. But once upon a time she’d been the heroine of this story and now, somehow, maybe just through the inevitable passage of time, she’d become nothing but background colour.

Well, she thought, as the player jumped the scratch at the end of When the World Was Young and Autumn Leaves started playing. Maybe it was time to take a leaf out of Sadie Hawkins’ book. She suspected that ‘Dante’ would make an excellent dance partner.


End file.
